Donald von
Wiedenman was born on August 10, 1944 in Santa Barbara California.
Raised in Hollywood and the Midwest, he attended the University of
Michigan, intending to study law.

He watched a lot of Perry Mason. Like many decisions he would make
throughout his life, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

But it wasn’t. He was impatient, anxious to get out into the real
world. Leaving Michigan after his sophomore year, he attended the
Bread Loaf
Writers' Conference on a scholarship for two summers in Middlebury
Vermont. He began his career as a writer at 19, having his first
nonfiction article published in Seventeen Magazine.

By then, he had moved to Richmond, Virginia and was working as a
copywriter and account executive with Clinton E. Frank, Inc., at that
time one of the largest advertising agencies in the country.

“It was like a Southern version of Mad Men,” von Wiedenman wrote,
“complete with button down shirts, office intrigue and three-martini
lunches. And we all chain-smoked. I wanted to write for a living,
and being in advertising was a way to start.

“I was also writing movie reviews for the Richmond Times Dispatch,
sneaking out of the office in the afternoons to see a matinee and
writing my reviews late into the night.”

Richmond was a small city and the chances of furthering his career there
seemed remote. “My boss had the best job in town, and he wasn’t about to
leave anytime soon. I didn’t want to move to New York where the
really Mad Men were, but I knew I wanted to leave Richmond. It was the
Sixties. I was restless. The South was still segregated, and it was
oppressive.”

He met an exchange student from London. She invited him to stay with her
when she left Richmond. Having no other plan and excited at the prospect
of living abroad, he sailed to Europe on the SS United States, steamer
trunk in tow, heading off into what would be one of the greatest
adventures of his life.

“It was 1966. I was 22 and very young for my age. I had a lot of
ambition. I was hell bent on making my mark as a writer.”

Flower Power was in bloom, drugs were in the air, and free love reigned
supreme. He was right in the middle of a cultural and sexual revolution,
something he had never even heard of, and to put it mildly, he grew up
very fast.

Drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll was the anthem at the heart of this new
generation. He jumped into the action with abandon.

Within two years, he had established himself as one of the most
prominent American journalists living in London. His work was
published in every major magazine in the UK and Europe.

“I figured that no one wanted to hear what I had to say, but I knew
that
celebrities were news. It was easy to get interviews with movie stars
then. The paparazzi had not yet ruined the reputation of celebrity
journalists. So I called up press agents at random or approached
celebrities on the street and interviewed anybody and everybody I
could.”

The strategy worked. He interviewed such celebrities as Elizabeth
Taylor, Richard Burton, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Yul Brynner,
Mia Farrow, Joseph Losey, Dirk Bogarde, Bryan Forbes, Lulu, The Fool,
Lawrence Harvey, Tom Jones, Rex Harrison and Cass Elliot. He became
close, personal friends with many of the stars he interviewed and
married one of them.

His profiles and in-depth interviews were published in the The London
Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph Magazine, European Vogue, Der Stern,
Paris Match, Intro Magazine, Nineteen Magazine, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar
and Queen Magazine.

He was soon dividing his time between his flat in London and his home in
the South of France near Plan de La Tour. Eventually he was established
enough to write what he chose to: counter-culture insights from an
American living abroad. He wrote a screenplay called The Sand
People which was optioned by EMI-MGM London.

During this time, he also went to work for Bob Guccione who had just
started Penthouse Magazine.

“When I met
him, he was working out of a tiny office on the Fulham Road. He hired me
as a contributing editor, which meant that for many of the first issues,
I wrote – made up is more like it – the bios on the centerfolds, the
movie reviews, interviewed more celebrities, created letters for the
Penthouse Forum and generally did any writing that needed to be done.
Sometimes I wrote articles under my own name, but a lot of my writing
was what we called editorial content. Really, it was just another word
for fiction.”

When Guccione decided to launch the magazine in the United States in the
late Sixties, von Wiedenman worked with him on the marketing and
advertising campaign. To this day, the American launch of Penthouse
Magazine into the American market is considered one of the most
successful in magazine history.

In 1970, von Wiedenman began experimenting with the visual arts,
deciding on collage as his medium. He had his first solo exhibit of his
work in London and his second a few months later in Paris.

In 1971, von Wiedenman returned to the States where he married singer
Cass Elliot of The Mamas and Papas.

After the divorce, von Wiedenman stayed in Los Angeles. He was writing
and working on a new art show.

“Sometime in the early Seventies, I realized that my attraction to
men was stronger than my attraction to women, and I came came to terms
with it. It was long overdue. Like everything I’ve ever
done, I did it with the obsessiveness of an addict. I was out!”

In 1974, he took on the position of
Features Editor of The Advocate.

“At that time, The Advocate was the only semi-respectable gay
publication in existence. It was sold in coin boxes on street corners
and was pretty much known for its sex ads. But it was the beginning of
something much larger. When they hired me, my mission was to help change
that image.

“It was a very heady time in the gay movement. Stonewall had changed the
world. People were coming out of the closet all over the place, Loud and
Proud. It wasn’t an easy time, but it was exciting to be part of
something so new. I remember leading one of the first gay parades on
Hollywood Boulevard in 1974, driving my orange mustang convertible,
pulling the Advocate float with a huge banner that read We Shall
Overcome. Gay men and lesbians were literally dancing in the streets.“

After a year, the magazine had been reshaped and was sold to David
Goodstein who turned the Advocate into one of the most prestigious gay
magazines in the world. It is alive and thriving today.

A year later, von Wiedenman had his first art exhibit of more than 125 works
of collage at the Limited Edition Gallery on Sunset Boulevard. It was a
critical and financial success and soon after von Wiedenman moved to
Malibu where he continued to create his art and write.

He was just finishing "Memoirs of an Unfit Mother," the biography of
Virginia Arness, the ex-wife of Gunsmoke’s James Arness, when she died,
causing him to abandon the project.

He returned to Los Angeles and reentered the world of advertising and
marketing when he became the junior partner in a boutique advertising
agency in West Hollywood.

Five years later, von Wiedenman founded what would become the first of
several corporations, all of them handling the marketing and advertising
needs of a wide variety of clients, everything from the largest
manufacturer of refrigerated trailers to skin care products.

“For many of our clients, we provided full service advertising and
marketing services. For others, we arranged funding, business strategies
and hands-on start-up management. It was the Eighties. I had gone from
being a Hippie to a Yuppie, and Yuppies everywhere were making money.”

“My attention span was never my strong suit, and doing one thing for any
length of time was never that appealing to me. And honestly I was bored with
advertising. I had a few art exhibits during that time, but I wanted to
do something different, something completely off the wall.”

In the mid Nineties, von Wiedenman founded Stable Entertainment,
an adult home video company. Funded with his own money and operated out
of his home in West Hollywood, Stable Entertainment became known for its
lavishly produced, story driven triple-X bisexual and gay videos
produced for the home entertainment market.

The company won Best Gay Video of the Year, and twice won Bisexual Video of the Year at the annual GayVN Awards, but the business itself did not flourish as well as von
Wiedenman had planned.

“The market was changing. Home videos were giving way to the DVD market,
and the internet was changing the way the world watched entertainment. I
didn’t entirely see the handwriting on the wall, so I probably stayed
too long at the fair. But I had a great run. It was limousines and
opening nights, award shows and parties that went on for days. And sex
was just everywhere. Owning an adult entertainment company and living
large in West Hollywood was the ultimate in rationalized debauchery.”

But it took its toll.

Burned out from the business and from living in Los Angeles for over 30
years, von Wiedenman finally sold Stable Entertainment in 2003 and
moved to Key West. He is now moving to Puerto Vallarta, where he
will continue writing and creating his art.

Close Personal Friends, his memoir of those five years
living in London and the South of France and becoming friends with the
most famous celebrities of that era, is soon to be published as an
eBook. He has a new art exhibit planned, and his novel Greenleaf
Terrace, about the high life in the LA fast lane, is scheduled to be
finished by next year.

Author’s Message:

But really, who cares?

With age comes wisdom and humility. I am no longer defined by money or
lack of it, fame, infamy, prestige, reputation, where I lived, what car
I drove, who I was married to, who I’ve known or what I‘ve done.

Whatever I’ve done has caused me to be here now.

Now I am happy and content, and, honestly, when it comes right down to
it, that’s all there is to know.

And now I’d like to share my experiences in words and pictures so that
others might learn and perhaps be entertained by the fanciful, surreal
exploits of just another fellow alien on this planet we call Earth.